


Just a Photograph

by TriplePirouette



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, Rumbelle Secret Santa 2013
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-06
Updated: 2014-09-06
Packaged: 2018-02-16 07:51:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2261790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TriplePirouette/pseuds/TriplePirouette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rumplestiltskin finds two photos of Belle, months apart. Written for NotAlwaysLate for the Rumbelle Secret Santa from the prompt “Just a wrinkled photograph.” Just a few, short vignettes for my Secret Santa.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just a Photograph

**Author's Note:**

  * For [notalwayslate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/notalwayslate/gifts).



> I hope you like this, dear. I can’t remember how long it has been since I wrote a proper story. (last secret santa, maybe??) There were some growing pains getting back into it, but I hope you enjoy it.

 

It was just a wrinkled photograph.

Bright blue eyes and the wide, white smile of a brunette in a cap and gown. A graduation picture.

It was a picture of an event that had never happened, not in this world and not in any other. “Where did you get this?” Gold growled at Moe, the florist cowering below the pawnbroker, bleeding and gasping for breath.

Moe spat on the floor, blood and saliva sliding across his lower lip. “Where do you think?” the florist growled back.

Gold shook his head and bit his lip. The curse did so many things, and Regina made sure it was cruel to those she could hurt. He had just that one scrap of china to remember her once the memories came back, but Moe- Moe had a daughter who’d graduated high school, maybe even college before she died, and pictures to fill those memories.

He might have had his own pictures of Baelfire, had he ever spoken his name to anyone in the last century. But he’d kept that closely guarded secret and was glad for it now. To see his boy’s shining face on wrinkled photo paper in his wallet or smiling with missing teeth on his wall would have crushed him.

For a moment, just one short moment, he was jealous of the man on the floor. He wanted that picture. He wanted the memories. He wanted anything of the life he’d shared with the woman who he would never forget. He slipped the picture into his pocket and threw the wallet on the floor. The jealousy melted into a simmering rage, and it made it all that much easier to sit down on the chair and press his cane against the man’s chest.

~*~

* * *

 

Belle leaned on the corner of the counter, watching as he boiled water for tea. “So,” she began, biting her lip and squinting her eyes, “there’s really no magic here.”

He shrugged, turning to her and crossing his arms. “There wasn’t. There is now.”

Belle nodded and let her fingers caress the countertop, fidgeting. “Because you brought it.” She nodded and lifted his cell phone. “And cars?” she asked, leaning against the counter and twirling the phone in her hands.

He smiled. “Not magic.”

“This.” She held up his cell phone and wiggled it, smiling cheekily.

“Cell phone,” he laughed lightly. “Not magic.”

She nodded, smiling as she walked over to him. “I think I’m starting to get the idea.”

He wrapped his arms around her, holding tightly as she leaned into his embrace. “But?” his eyebrows raised, a smile barely concealed on his lips.

She looked indignant for a moment, but it melted away with mirth as she remembered that he knew her all too well. Belle leaned in to him, her voice low and conspiratorial. “How does the little silver box in your sitting room make paintings so fast without any paint?”

His head snapped back and he blinked at her as he thought, tried to think about what she could be talking about when his mind landed on the image of his digital camera. “The little box with the screen? The camera?”

Belle nodded and tried the word out in her mouth. “Camera. Yes.” She smiled up at him with immense joy. “How does it do that?”

~*~

* * *

 

It was just a wrinkled photograph.

He was surprised it was still in his pocket. After everything, he was still surprised that he was alive. But somehow, someway, Rumplestiltskin had made it out alive.

He’d woken up on the forest floor, forest that looked familiar enough to make him think that he’d not gone far or perhaps was right where he had been on the main thoroughfare of Storybrooke. The town was gone, trees and moss and grass that look as though it had been there for ages was around him for as far as he could see.

His ankle ached and knee twitched. He rolled over on the hard, moist ground and sat up, patting down his pockets. A cell phone with no signal. A pen. A set of keys to doors that no longer existed. And his wallet.

Twenty seven dollars, a photo id, his bank card, a business card, and one wrinkled photo.

It was printed on photo paper, the kind from the dwarf’s stop and save that wasn’t quite the good kind but got the job done on his home printer.

Belle had been amazed by technology- but nothing fascinated her as the camera did. Once he’d taught her how to use it (and explained the principals behind it several times) she snapped away at everything. He’d invested in a larger memory card, and uploaded the photos each night. There was a whole study on Pongo and what different lights did to his coloring. She documented every different flower in the garden out back and decided a visual catalogue of the house library was absolutely necessary.

Then, she had discovered the world of taking pictures of herself. She told him that one of the girls from the high school called them ‘selfies’ and taught her how to do it. One day he’d discovered a camera full of silly faces and blown kisses.

After that, he noticed that the first and last picture every day, or whenever she’d hand the camera over to be emptied, would be of her blowing a kiss. He’d asked her about it one night as she watched the photos flash across the screen as the files uploaded to the computer. She’d told him it was kisses for him, to thank him for doing this for her. He smiled and handed her back his camera.

She flipped it around and with a flash that caught him off guard, kissed him before bouncing away.

He’d printed it out and slipped it in his wallet, a beautiful print of her lips against his, her eyes closed just enough so her lashes kissed her cheeks, a slight smile curling at the edges of her lips, surprise written all over his face. He knew, deep down, this was their entire relationship: Belle surprising him with her love. It had taken him too long to understand, to accept it, to see what she was truly trying to do.

But he had seen, and he’d sacrificed.

Somewhere, somehow, there was a power, a magic, that had understood that he had made a pure gesture. It understood, whatever it was, that he’d finally found the core of what he’d been doing wrong, that he’d done what needed to be done for the right reasons, the reasons he’d never before been able to honor.

His only regret had been that his only choice to do the right thing, the only ending he could have as a villain, would leave Belle without her happy ending and without her true love.

Somehow, that had been fixed, as well.

He let his fingers play over the shiny surface of the photo, the memory of her taking it, of him printing it, only a few weeks old. It was still bright in his mind, still enough to bring tears to his eyes and to leave the sound of her laugh ringing in his ears.

He slipped the photo back in his wallet and stood using the support of a tree. It wouldn’t be easy, but he’d done it before. He’d had lifetimes, then, to find a way across worlds. But he knew more now. He’d find a way.

~*~

* * *

 

“Emma, who was at the door?” Gold walked out of the small back room, smartly dressed in his suit despite the rest of his family’s pajamas. She looked at him, shaking a bit, and he reached out a hand to steady her. “Henry, go get ready for school, will you?” Gold looked over his shoulder at his grandson, sending him a reassuring smile.

Henry looked concerned, his eyes daring to his mother, but in the last eight months he’d learned to trust the man who was his grandfather. “Sure Pop.”

Gold looked at Emma, the woman he’d come to know so much better in the last eight months, and saw a panic like he’d only ever seen in Storybrooke before. Of course, she didn’t remember those days. He did.

He’d remembered enough to try Boston, then New York, and a half a dozen other cities before he finally tracked her down. By the time he’d found her and the boy he’d had enough of a story, enough evidence, to convince her to listen to him. And there was enough memory left under there, enough gut instinct that he knew she trusted from their time in Storybrooke, that she did trust him.

Gold had told her that Neal had gone missing from his life, and that he was searching for him, to make amends. Not another lie slipped from his lips about his boy. He told half-truths, yes, but never another lie about his past. She’s let him befriend her, meet Henry, and after a few months, they’d all fallen into a careful little family.

Every moment was a gift to Gold, a chance to make amends for lifetimes of wrongs. And every moment brought him closer to the day when he knew they’d need the savior again. He might not have magic, but there were fairies and dwarfs and a very determined librarian that did in another world. He knew, one day, they’d find him.

From the look in Emma’s eyes, he knew today was that day.

Leaning on his cane he left her clutching at his arm to open the door. Of all the faces he expected to see, the kohl-lined eyes across from him had never appeared in his imagination. “Well, of all the people I’d want to see, Hook, you’re very nearly the last.”

The pirate stood taller and took a swaggering step forward. “I watched you die, crocodile. How are you standing here?”

Gold peaked back at Emma, her arms wrapped tight around her and her eyes wide as she tried to overhear their conversation. “Even I don’t know the answer to that. But I’ve been protecting my family. Waiting for someone to come.” Gold stepped forward. “I assume you have a way back, if you’re here.”

The pirate’s face fell, his voice dropping low and quiet. “They need her. It’s time.”

Gold sighed and opened the door, Hook walking past him even as Emma backed away from both men. “And this is where a new story begins,” Gold mumbled under his breath, thinking of the old book of fairytales stowed in the back of Emma’s closet. He smiled and held his hand out. “Emma, get dressed. Then, I need to tell you a story.”


End file.
